Education Week - November 27, 2019 - 4

BRIEFLY STATED

Yet Another Report
Finds States Dole Out
More to Richer Kids

Should All Students Have to Take the Same Math Classes?
You're ready, with your counselor's guidance, to pick your high
school math classes. Algebra 1 first. Then geometry. Then Algebra 2.
Just like Mom and Dad did. Just like Grandma and Grandpa did.
Isn't it about time to change things up, especially for students
not planning to go into a field that demands much math? That's
what a math-advocacy group is asking.
Too often, "irrelevant math hurdles" are becoming stumbling
blocks for students who don't aspire to careers in science,
technology, engineering, or math. Plus, schools do poorly nurturing
and recruiting black and Latino students into challenging math
classes, says Just Equations in a report out this month.
To serve all students well, schools must start thinking
differently about their math courses, write co-authors Phil Daro,
a lead author of the Common Core State Standards in math,

Many states spend more money on wealthier
students than on poorer ones. Not exactly a
bombshell, is it? Unfortunately for advocates
pushing a more progressive model, the state of
school funding remains pretty gloomy.
In one of many reports that have been rolled out
over the years addressing financial equity, a new
one from the Education Law Center indicates that
more than a third of the states distribute billions
of K-12 dollars in a regressive manner, spending
more on wealthier students than on impoverished
students. Another 17 spend equal amounts of
money on both, even though research shows poor
students are more expensive to educate.
In its latest "Making the Grade" report, the
organization blames aging state funding formulas
and rapidly increasing poverty rates among
children for district budget cuts, stagnant teacher
pay, and academic-achievement gaps.
Several states, including Alabama, Colorado,
and Texas, spend significantly less than their
counterparts, the report says, even though they
have the economy and tax base to spend more.
In contrast, the authors laud Alaska and
Wyoming for it equitable school spending.
The group graded every state based on its
funding level, the way it distributes K-12 funds,
and how much taxing effort the state puts into
school funding.
States in the South and Southwest, including
Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas, received
especially low marks for spending more money
on wealthy districts than poor ones. And Arizona,
which has seen a surge of teacher strikes over low
pay in recent years, received an F, as did Nevada.

and Harold Asturias, the director of the University of California,
Berkeley's Center for Mathematics Excellence and Equity.
They propose a model that would eliminate the classic Algebra 1geometry-Algebra 2 model in favor of a pattern that would have all
students in the same math classes in 9th and 10th grades, followed
by a set of choices beginning in 11th grade.
An 11th grade course might delve into statistics, game theory,
and math modeling. Such courses "should not be watered-down
versions of STEM topics, but instead topics with their own heft and
potential relevance in branch fields" like data science, statistics,
probability, digital graphics, and robotics, the report says.
All courses should be rigorous and prepare students for college
without demanding they master types of math they won't need
down the road, the report says.

Media Classes Aside, Students Can't Discern 'Fake' News
Oh the gullibility that afflicts our nation's youth.
Case in point: a video on Facebook showing grainy footage of
people cramming papers into boxes. A voiceover claims it's proof
of ballot-stuffing in the 2016 presidential election. "Have you ever
noticed that the ONLY people caught committing voter fraud are
Democrats?" text at the bottom of the post prompts.
Does this constitute strong evidence of voter fraud, U.S. high
school students were asked for a study by the Stanford History
Education Group. Yes, they replied, it did.
As it turns out, the video scenes are from Russia, not the United
States. Even among the students who saw through the ruse,
a quarter couldn't articulate why the video was suspect. Only
three of the 3,000-plus responses tracked down the source of the
original video.
Students' weak performance on that task and five others aiming
to gauge their online reasoning skills constitutes alarming evidence
that a large majority of students are not well prepared to investigate
sources of information for their accuracy, relevance, and quality.

Elizabeth Robertson/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP

edweek.org

And despite more than a decade's worth of policy chatter about
media literacy, whatever schools have been doing doesn't appear
to have been enough to inoculate students against "fake" news.
"Reliable information is to civic health what proper sanitation and
potable water are to public health," wrote the researchers, part of
the Stanford History Education Group at Stanford University. "We
need high-quality digital-literacy curricula, validated by rigorous
research, to guarantee the vitality of American democracy."
The study is based on results from nearly 3,450 9th to 12th
graders who took a series of media-literacy exercises, including
examining the Russian video. They also were asked to distinguish
between news and ads on Slate's website, to examine whether a
nonprofit's page on global warming was reliable, compare two
webpages, and analyze a tweet from an advocacy group.
The study sample generally mirrored, though didn't entirely
match, the demographic composition of U.S. schools, and it is not
nationally representative. Still, the results are sobering: Students
can be deceived easily.

SAFETY AND VIOLENCE

School Shootings This Year:
How Many and Where
School shootings-terrifying to students,
educators, parents, and communities-
always reignite polarizing debates about
gun rights and school safety. To bring
context to these debates, Education Week
is continuing to track such incidents. So far
in 2019, there've been 23 shootings in K-12
schools that killed or injured people.
www.edweek.org/go/shooting-tracker

Keeping Football Games Safe
This month, two incidents added to our
school shooting tracker highlighted
unique school-safety challenges: the fatal
shooting in Santa Clarita, Calif., (see page
1) and another at a high school football
game in Pleasantville, N.J.. That shooting
sent spectators into a panic, injured
multiple people, and left a 10-year-old boy
dead (see photo, left). It was a sobering
reminder of the challenge schools face in
keeping sporting events safe.
www.edweek.org/go/football-shooting

Camden High and Pleasantville High
players pause to honor a boy killed in
a shooting that occurred during the
teams' Nov. 15. playoff game.

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Education Week - November 27, 2019

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